The leaders of the Senate and House intelligence committees voiced fresh concerns Sunday about recently revealed National Security Agency surveillance efforts and what the White House says it knew about them.

Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., suggested that he didn’t believe recent reports that President Barack Obama was unaware that the United States had been monitoring German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone for more than a decade.

“I think there’s going to be some Best Actor awards coming out of the White House this year and Best Supporting Actor awards coming out of the European Union,” Rogers said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Rogers said it was “a bit shocking” that people all around the world who are actively engaged in espionage efforts apparently “didn’t have an understanding about how we collect information to protect the United States.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., his Senate counterpart, said on the same program that tapping the phone lines of close foreign allies “has much more political liability than probably intelligence viability.”

But Michael Hayden, a former NSA director, said, “leadership intentions were a very high intelligence priority for the life of the National Security Agency. It’s nothing special, and it’s certainly nothing new.”

Hayden, also appearing on “Face the Nation,” said he takes Obama’s statement that he was unaware of the activity “at face value,” adding that the fact that others apparently didn’t rush to tell him supports the notion that the high-level eavesdropping “wasn’t exceptional. This is what we were to do.”

Feinstein renewed her call for a “full review” of U.S. intelligence programs, saying that the White House is doing one and that she hopes Congress will as well.

Rogers complained that there has been too much focus on the NSA revelations and too little on the threats the United States faces.

“We need to focus on who the bad guys are,” Rogers said. “And the bad guys, candidly, are not U.S. intelligence agencies. They’re the good guys at the end of the day.”

Both intelligence committee chairs rejected the recent suggestion that Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked the agency documents, might receive clemency in the United States. Snowden, now living in Russia, has been charged with theft and two violations of the 1917 Espionage Act.

“He stripped our system,” Feinstein said, adding that he could have chosen to become a whistleblower and share the documents he uncovered with Congress. “That didn’t happen,” she said. “Now he’s done this enormous disservice to our country.”